The Omega Letter Intelligence Digest
Vol: 51 Issue: 3 - Saturday, December 03, 2005
Arabs Love France the Best, Poll Says
Among the world's democracies, the French offer the world's best model of freedom. That's what the polling group, Zogby International found in its survey of the Arab population of the Middle East.
Working with Zogby on the poll was the University of Maryland's 'Sadat Chair for Peace and Development' Department.
The questions were put to a cross-section of Arabs in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. Given the choices between Germany, Great Britain, France, the United States and Sweden, a plurality of 45% picked France.
The poll reveals how effectively the liberal mainstream has poisoned America's image abroad during its private campaign against the administration and the conservative majority.
Only 14 percent of the Arab world believes the United States is the country with the "most freedom and democracy for their own people."
Fascinating. Particularly in light of the fact that America consistently tops the list of countries they'd most like to move to.
It is a rather glaring contradiction; why would the majority of Arabs want to live in what they think is the least free of the major First World nations?
Now, ask yourself this question. What is the well-spring of public information about the United States? Where did the 86% of Arabs who think America the least free on the list get the information that caused them to form that opinion?
Perhaps they read the New York Times editorial blasting UN Ambassador John Bolton for 'blocking reform' at the UN by his "blustering unilateral style" that has turned "him into one of the biggest obstacles to achieving changes that had been within reach before he appeared on the scene."
(At the time of Bolton's appointment, Kofi Annan was still denying any UN wrongdoing in the Oil-For-Food ripoff).
A whopping seventy-seven percent of Arabs said they believe the Iraqis are worse off today than they were under Saddam Hussein!
Let's give that a little close consideration. We are three years into a war that has claimed tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. The majority of the Iraqi deaths in Iraq have come at the hands of their insurgent co-religionists.
Almost every day we hear of a terrorist attack somewhere in Iraq claiming dozens of lives at a time. This is indeed terrible.
Until one compares it to the gassing of entire villages. Or the extermination of entire ethnic groups. Or the mass graves. Or the rape rooms.
Under Saddam, one lived or died at the whim of the state. There was no appeal; no recourse, no fighting back and no hope. Why would 77% of Arabs believe Iraqis were 'better off' under Saddam? Where would they get that idea?
Iraq's economy is starting to take off, US forces, when not battling insurgents, are building hospitals, schools, improving the infrastructure, training and equipping Iraqi military forces, providing billions of dollars in aid, and scrupulously avoiding interfering with Iraqi self-rule.
Perhaps because they heard Dick Durbin claim that American forces were behaving like Nazis, engaging in torture and illegally detention? Or they read in Newsweek that American forces flush pages of the Koran down the toilet for their own amusement?
Seventy-six percent of Arabs said they believed America's work in the Middle East was based on oil, while 69 percent stated that they "do not believe [spreading] democracy is a real objective."
Where did they get the idea America is in Iraq to seize their oil? Perhaps the New York Times' editorial page? Or from a quote from a United States Senator like Ted Kennedy, or John Kerry or Harry Reid? Maybe from Nancy Pelosi? Perhaps from former president Bill Clinton?
Do YOU believe that removing Saddam was about seizing Iraqi oil for Bush's oil friends? How come gas is 30% higher now than it was when Saddam was using his oil to bribe the UN?
The poll also found that eighty percent of those polled based their opinions of America on American foreign policy, not on American values. What is there about American foreign policy that makes America less free and less democratic than France?
And, speaking of France and the UN, how is it that they get off the hook for keeping Iraqi civilians in chains for thirteen years so that they could steal the money earmarked for food and medicine for the Iraqi people?
The French foreign policy for thirteen years was to prop up and support Saddam's nightmare regime in exchange for bribes. The UN's Iraq policy was to stall intervention and keep Saddam in power and his people under sanctions for as long as possible so that Kofi Annan and Company could loot the Iraqi treasury.
France and Germany armed Saddam with the with chemical and biological weapons that he used to repress the 1991 rebellion that resulted in the massacre of 200,000 Shi'ia and Kurds.
The Arab world sees them as superior models of freedom and democracy to the United States.
Assessment:
Can you see what is happening here? Now, can you EXPLAIN it ????
For the moment, allow me to address our American OL members. You LIVE in America. Is it less free than FRANCE ??? Has that question EVER entered your mind?
Freedom is America's most enduring characteristic; so much so that it also represents America's greatest vulnerability.
America is so free that its elected politicians feel no sense of restraint or responsibility in their comments, even when they cross the line into what the US Code defines as the crime of 'treason':
"Whoever, OWING ALLEGIANCE to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies, giving them AID AND COMFORT within the United States or elsewhere, is guilty of treason. . ." (Title 18, US Code)
It is a safe assumption that elected federal representatives to the House and Senate owe allegiance to the United States. The Zogby poll offers powerful evidence that their war against the administration has poisoned America's image abroad, particularly among our enemies.
Two years into the Bush administration, Arab opinion polls favored Bill Clinton as the 'best US president' regarding Arab issues, despite eight years of US air attacks against Saddam Hussein's Iraq, including Operation Desert Fox, the longest sustained bombing campaign of Baghdad since the 1991 Gulf War.
It was the Clinton administration that fought the hardest to maintain sanctions against Saddam. It was the Clinton administration that declared regime change in Iraq to be official US policy back in 1998.
And it was the Clinton administration's intelligence apparatus that developed the majority of the intelligence upon which the decision to go to war was based. But Clinton gets the highest marks among Arabs of any US president.
How can this be? If anything, Clinton should be at least as unpopular among Arabs as Bush is. It was Clinton that bombed the Sudan's only pharmaceutical plant. It was Clinton that sent the first American cruise missiles into Afghanistan.
It was Clinton that forced the Arabs into the Oslo Agreement that legitimized Israel's claims to Jerusalem, and it was during the Clinton administration that Congress officially recognized Jerusalem as Israel's undivided capital.
Why does Clinton get a pass from the Arab world?
Read America's newspapers. That is where the Arab world gets its opinion from. Where else COULD it get its opinion from? al-Jazeera? It is only quoting American politicians and selected US newspapers.
The Arab world doesn't understand Red State/Blue State politics. They understand that Senator Dick Durbin says our forces 'torture' Islamic prisoners. And they understand 'torture' in the sense of what it means in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
They understand that Ted Kennedy is a United States Senator and Ted Kennedy says the president of the United States is a 'war criminal'. In the Middle East, they also understand the term 'war criminal' in the sense of what it means in Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. It means mass graves.
They understand that John Kerry is a United States Senator who almost became president of the United States. And they know that John Kerry says the president of the United States is a liar who invaded a sovereign country to steal its oil wealth.
Here's the best part. If one is an American who doesn't like to see his nation trashed in public and defends it, he is automatically a George Bush partisan.
The better part of the defense of his country as an honorable nation forced into war by a sneak attack is spent defending himself from charges of blind political partisanship.
It has evolved into a topsy-turvy equation in which dissent is patriotism whereas assent is petty political partisanship -- while American forces are still engaged on the battlefield.
The dissenters get all the favorable press for taking a 'courageous stand' in opposing the government's war effort and those who point out that what hurts the government war effort hurts America are marginalized as 'partisan Bush supporters.'
The delusion is other-worldly, almost unfathomable. How can one possibly contribute to the image of one's country as a superpower run amok while its forces remain engaged on the battlefield and be feted as a 'patriot' by that nation's media? What message does that send to the enemy?
WHY would any American want to send it?
Dick Durbin calls our forces 'Nazis'. Let's run with that analogy.
During World War Two, the word 'partisan' referred to those people in the resistance who fought against the Nazis. There was also a German resistance movement that fought against Hitler's madness from within.
To the Germans, that made them traitors. To the victorious allies, they were heroes. All sides agreed after the war that their efforts were invaluable to the Nazi defeat.
According to their own rhetoric, America's Far Left is carrying Durbin's 'Nazi' analogy all the way. Better a military defeat, if it removes Bush's 'regime'.
When I was young and naive, I used to read the Bible's description of the 'strong delusion' that would convince a sophisticated and educated American public that the antichrist was a god worthy of worship as described in Revelation Chapter 13.
It always gave me pause. "It couldn't happen here," I thought.
America is in what the administration has accurately termed a 'generational war' in which the next generation of jihadists are already being trained to engage OUR next generation.
Their training manuals include the New York Times and the Congressional Record. Their motivational speakers are members of the United States Senate.
Based on what the Arab world learns from the American media, France is a superior model of democracy and freedom. America is second only to tiny Israel as the Arab's world's greatest perceived threat to world peace and freedom.
And the Bible makes no mention of any nation resembling America during the Tribulation Period.
"And a man's foes shall be they of his own household." (Matthew 10:36)
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